Qantas has apologised to the family of an eight-year-old boy who was exposed to a hardcore pornographic image while checking a Lions tickets promotion on the airline's Facebook page on Friday morning.
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The Sydney boy had been looking through posts on the page on his father's iPad when he came across the image. The father asked not to be named to protect his son.
Qantas confirmed the image was apparently visible on its Facebook page for about seven hours.
It also confirmed being contacted by the family.
''Spam was posted to the Qantas Facebook page in the middle of the night, which included an inappropriate image the size of a profile picture,'' a spokesman said.
''We removed the post as soon as we saw it and offered an apology to a gentleman who contacted us to complain.''
The boy's father said while the image had been used as a profile picture it was quite visible.
''When you rolled over it on the iPad a larger version of the image popped up,'' he said. ''The anatomical details were quite clearly recognisable.''
The man is critical of the company's response, saying when he first spoke to staff in the social media unit he was told ''there is nothing we can do about it''.
Then, when he was passed on to a senior public relations official, he was told it was ''not too bad'' as there was less chance people would have been exposed to it as it was only visible from about midnight.
''The last time I checked, Qantas was an international carrier and Facebook was a 24-hour social media platform, not just a 9am to 5pm experience,'' he said.
He said he had also been accused of trying to scam the company for free Lions tickets.
Companies such as Qantas that use Facebook pages for promotional purposes are responsible for what the pages contain, regardless of who posts the content.
Qantas social media staff had to remove racist comments from the Facebook page in April after a decision to remove pork from food offerings on flights that stopped in Dubai prompted a negative reaction.
At least 10 staff were suspended from their jobs just over a year ago for looking at, sending or receiving pornographic pictures on company computers at Sydney Airport.
There is no suggestion the Facebook post was made by a Qantas employee. The spokesman said the incident was unfortunate. ''Facebook is a great way for us to talk with our customers and it's really unfortunate some people will go out of their way to spoil it for others by posting something inappropriate.
''We do monitor our Facebook presence very closely and have numerous filters in place to prevent inappropriate content, but this is obviously a challenge facing all companies using social media.''
